Thank you very much. Just what I was looking for. I used to get parts from an old technician at St Vincent de Paul. He'd been doing it for decades. He had barrels full of variable capacitors, tubes, everything else. The store sold them very cheap. When he died all that stuff disappeared.

Thanks but I didn't see anything there. Check out KL7AJ's link. See those beautiful aluminum variable capacitors? That's what I want! I used to have lots of them, bought them for peanuts. Now look at them, 10 dollars apiece! Sheesh!

I think the construction article I read in a 1920's magazine did pretty well using the foil and cellophane from a pack of Luckies to make the tuning capacitor. It had the coil wound properly on a box (cylinder?) of oat meal.

I had encountered that same article earlier this year, and made hardcopy. The way its set up, the cap isn't very useful -- too fragile, it won't retain its parameters due to evaporation and alignment problems. But it is something to think about. An inventive person might be able to at least put the principle to work.

That sounds interesting. Lately, I've had the idea of making a variable inductor using a ferrite rod to pass through the tunnel of the winding of an air coil. I thought maybe a crank handle at the end of a screw, kind of like on a lathe, would be a good way of tuning the radio I'm building. A pointer for the radio dial would ride the screw. Just a thought.

You might have to make your own. With a name like PackratKing, I should think you can improvise in experimental fashion with some of the stuff you've got around the shop!

Click to expand...

You are correct in your assumption.........and you would likely be agast to see some of the stuff I come up with.

.......where I work.... is primarily an HVAC repair shop, repairing any and all equipment to do with oil or gas fired Industrial and residential heating, pumps, motors of all sizes, Industrial and consumer power tools etc. Doesn't matter if it is current - to - obsolete technology, if you can get it in the door, we can usually make it work again.

Our "power supply board" runs high and low voltage 3-phase, 240 split, or humble 120 vac, or dc from 240 volt on down, through a selection of switching controls, that feed an " alligator-clip suicide lead " with which we can power virtually anything.............

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“Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.”